


A Daughter of the American (Psycho) Revolution, via the Lineage of Marion Crane

by Fahye



Category: World's Wife - Carol Ann Duffy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/pseuds/Fahye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad things happen to girls who want too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Daughter of the American (Psycho) Revolution, via the Lineage of Marion Crane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exeterlinden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/gifts).



> I was so chuffed to see this as a listed fandom, I knew I'd definitely want to write it as a treat. And your idea about 'the sexily dressed sorority girl who always has to die in horror movies' stuck in my head, so here she is!

~

A short list of facts about my  
even shorter life:

1.

I grew up in a picket-fenced house, white, barefoot on the lawn,  
never out of sight of caring eyes. Never been book smart.  
The arts of word and figure whip at the skin, and sink  
only so far as to bring no pain to idle fingers grown too old,  
too prone to think, too savvy for spindle’s certainty.

But who needs the gentle spinning of  
minds upon themselves?

Not this unshod heedless girl growing like dandelions, soft  
toward sunshine, held aloft. Not this fleet and fated  
canary in the mine -- golden-tressed -- all the better  
to be stroked with a finger. Dressed, but not to kill.  
All the better to cry out, high and sweet:  
danger, danger!

2.

I have three brothers who will, no doubt, be fathers to  
girls, worth only the price of their faces. Climb back  
into the foliage of my family tree; unpack the myth.  
Look for the dead-end branches, the leaves that fell  
prematurely brown, the senseless summer deaths,  
force-pruned. Name every wound. Let the men live on  
to tell the stories, drop tears like leaves; the girls,  
like me, forewarned. Always avenged but never mourned.

The ghosts of my sisters are tangled like twigs in my hair.

3.

According to my mother, bad things will happen if sex  
is not the enemy--the bogeyman--the thing that appears  
when you call his warm and salty name too many times.  
But I've made friends with sex, shaken his hand, slicked my own  
along my slit. Gone postal, gone on heat, gone to bed  
with whomever I pleased.

I want to shake the shame from every sordid act, expose  
the joy beneath. I want my ohs and ahs to taste divine;  
I want the aftershock and calm thereafter, gluten heavy  
limbs, my whims and wishes catered for. To shiver awake  
to a hand on my spine and  
a mouth on my on-switch, my rhymes-with-slit.

The things I want have names and I  
have called them all from treetops.

4.

My favourite colour is green, though all my shirts  
are bridal pale.

(Less for innocence and more for the sweat of my fear:  
transforming, transparent. Red on green will not show up  
in black and white.)

5.

A certain type of beauty is said to invite the eyes and  
also the empty sockets of Death to take a peek.  
Fairest of them all; so very fair that one can see  
my veins beneath the skin. My bones lie  
close to the surface and suck at the air, asking to be freed  
from the unnatural shocks of flesh. My thousands  
and thousands of cells clang shut and count the hours.

Even Death can’t make up his mind how he wants me:  
bent over the bed, in the sudsy tub, skewered,  
done like a dog. Heated up and eaten out  
like the missionaries, chained at hand and foot.  
Choked and breathless to the end. Pale skin  
exposed and peeled right back, gin-drunk painted  
Jezebel rose, oyster tongued and eagerly  
spreadeagled. Passive, perfect; naked in the shower,  
screaming my way at the top of my lungs  
toward a little death. Reverse cowgirl with blood on her neck--  
erchief. Miss Scarlet Woman in the library, with the rope.

Bad things happen to girls who want too much.

7.

There is no point to me if I don’t die young;  
after all, what could I possibly grow up to be?

Thank you for asking.

Writer, dancer, lawyer, plumber, actor, baker,  
soldier, singer, doctor, mother, builder, teacher,  
wife? Just give me life, and see what I can spin.

Who knows.

I might have grown, up and ever up toward the sun,  
into a person who was something more than this:  
useless in a crisis (loses her head),  
but good for a grope, canary trope,  
screaming--  
screaming--  
screaming--  
dead.


End file.
